Shannon Town Sustainable Energy Community (SEC)

  Here's the inverter inside the wooden power station housing. So I finished weatherproofing the 1KW power station housing earlier this week and tried it out in the garden. The DPC (damp proof course) plastic stapled to the pine should allow the unit to survive the rain for a few hours :) The unit provides AC out (1000W for 2 hours) and AC in and PV in to recharge the batteries. The unit needs bigger wheels and some kind of handles to allow it to be wheeled around more easily. The 1150W microwave was too much for it and caused the inverter to beep before shutting down. (Reducing the power rating on the microwave made no difference). A 700W toaster worked OK. As it only draws 761W The PV input also worked OK. This allows the inverter to charge the batteries using a solar panels. And the inverter's display showed the batteries PV charging :) So bringing the power station back inside the kitchen to try a 1000W load on it. It is pulling down 900+W quite happily for tens of minutes ...

Here's the agenda items: 1) How can we grow our SEC? (Youtube, etc.) 2) Sustainability day in Shopping Centre 3) Information table 4) Starting an Energy Masterplan 5) Keeping in touch with other SECs 5) AOB

I have wired (with fuses) two Renogy 12v 100Ah batteries in parallel and connected to a 12v 1000W hybrid inverter. This was then enclosed in a wooden box with: 1) a weatherproof mains socket. So mains equipment can be plugged in and draw 240 vac at up to 1000W for 2.4 hours. 2) a mains plug (for overnight/cheap rate charging of the batteries) 3) A pair of MC4 PV panel connectors. So the batteries can also be charged for free on a sunny day via a PV panel. I still have to weatherproof the box and add a webserver to allow its operation to be monitored via a mobile phone. It can then be a portable power station and used for demonstration purposes, say, to power laptops on our information table :)